Can You Paint Laminate Countertops With Chalk Paint?

If you have made it here then you must be thinking of painting your laminate countertops with chalk paint, but is this possible? Well, I got a kitchen countertop sample and painted it with some chalk paint then tested the end result. Read on to see what happened.

The Laminate Countertop

This is the sample I am going to paint with chalk paint. it is a regular laminate kitchen worktop, white with a slight marble pattern. pretty much the type of countertop you find in most kitchens.

Sanding The Laminate

Before painting this sample I am going to split it down the middle with some masking tape. On one side I will sand it with high grit paper, on the other side I will just paint the chalk paint straight onto the laminate.

The idea behind sanding a smooth surface like this laminate countertop is that it roughs the surface up. This then makes it much easier for the paint to stick to it and stops it from chipping as easily.

Painting The Countertop

I painted the countertop at first with a chalk paintbrush. You can see me below putting the first bit of paint onto the sanded side of the kitchen worktop.

You can see that the paint covers the laminate really easily. Even going from a light to dark colour.

Now you can see the sanded side fully painted. Make note of the lines in the paint from the brush, this is something I will have to come back to later!

Now both sides have been painted. You can still see the lines quite clearly in the paint, this is after I have spent a lot of time trying to get them out.

Sanding Down The Paint

Because of the visible lines, I decided to try again on this sample using a roller. So to begin with I had to sand down the paint that was already on the countertop. To do this I used a really high grit paper, 220 grit, this is to try and flat down the paint that is already on.

Below you can see the laminate countertop after it has been sanded back down.

One interesting thing to note here is how much more paint came off the side that wasn’t pre-sanded.

Painting With A Roller

To try and get a better finish this time I applied the paint with a small foam roller.

The finish I achieved with a roller was much better than I managed to achieve with a brush. I would definitely recommend using a roller if you do decide to paint your laminate countertops.

You can see the slight texture left behind by the roller but this actually matches in really well to what you would expect on a laminate surface.

Scratch Test

So now I grabbed a large price of rough-cut c16 timber and rubbed it across the laminate surface. This is a really tough test to see how well the paint has adhered to the laminate.

You can see that while neither side has fared perfectly the sanded side has done much much better than the un-sanded side.